13.2003»
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Invest a little time and I'll take it from there.
Kafoury and Katz were two of the main supporters.
This was King before politicians thought
about courting the gay vote, Nicola notes. “You
can’t imagine someone getting elected to the
Portland City Council, for example, without the
support of our community, hut at that time, there
was no organized community to speak of," he
says. “So for Vera and Steve to give us the sup
port they did, when there was no conceivable
political payoff for them, that was pretty brave.”
H ie hill almost didn’t get out of committee.
When it did, it was time to gather support for
the public hearing.
Several members of the Second Foundation
met at the Family Zixi, a gay bar in Portland, to
write letters asking their representatives to sup
port the hill. Word spread for people to come
out and help. Nicola created a map so people
could easily identify their representative. They
cranked out letters and donated a nickel each
for postage. “That was the level of our sophisti
cation," Nicola laughs.
Rut it worked. Later, Nicola heard that
many legislators were surprised to get letters
from actual constituents rather than people not
in their district.
The public hearing was held on a spring day
in early May. The House Senate and Federal
Affairs Committee laid out the rules: Testimony
was to last for only one hour. This was a hearing,
not a pep rally. There was to he no applause.
“There was an awful lot of emotional testify
ing," Hutchins recalls. When he first became
involved with the hill, he says the atmosphere
was partylike and friendly. “ But when you actu
ally get up to testify, it starts getting to where it
is a gut-wrenching kind of thing to where you
realize this is serious.”
People spoke in general terms and specifics.
One woman said she was fired from her job as a
bartender because she wouldn’t date men.
Another woman said she was evicted from her
apartment. The Oregon District Branch of the
American Psychiatric Association stilted, “There
is no proper medical basis to accord homosexuals
less than full and equal protection under the law."
And then Rita Knapp spoke.
“ 1 was counting on what the psychiatric
group had to say as Kang so compelling that
anything 1 could say would not be very impor
tant,” says Knapp, who in 1977 co-founded the
Portland chapter of Parents, Families and
Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
She couldn’t have been more wrong. In a
heartfelt tone, she talked about the importance
of the rights of her daughter, Kristan Aspen, who
went on to helm the Lesbian Community Proj
ect. The Oregonian reported that Knapp
described Aspen and her friends as being social
ly conscious, intelligent, warm and happy. Knapp
said people need to recognize that citizens have
to be free to chcxtse their own lifestyle. It was
time to come out of the Dark Ages and disengage
from the myths and fears. It was time to erase the
laws that deprive homosexuals of their rights.
When she finished talking, she stixxl up from
the table and heard a loud noise. At first she
thought she must have knocked the microphone
off the table. Rut then she realized it was applause.
Everyone had ignored the committee’s rules.
“You would have had to he absolutely heart
less not to applaud her,” Nicola recalls. “It was
incredible.”
The bill may have failed, but it was the start
of more to come. “Going from the situation
where we were sitting in a bar and having peo
ple handwrite those letters and pay a nickel for
the stamp to what we have tixlay is just amaz
ing,” Nicola says. J H
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“We’re very disappointed,” Thorpe said.
“Unfortunately, the Republican Parry at the pre
sent time is controlled by the extreme right
wing...and so it’s very difficult to be a moderate
Republican in our state Legislature.”
Thorpe believes that RRO has enough
votes to pass the legislation but that G O P
leaders seem determined to prevent them
from ever going to the floor. “ 1 think that the
state Legislature should he ashamed that 30
years have passed and they have still not
acted on what, at the time, was a visionary
piece of legislation and what now is just long
overdue.”
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nce again, the Oregon Legislature disregard
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Senate Bill 786 would have banned discrim
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gender identity in employment, housing, public
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tion. Senate Bill 816 would have added gender
identity to the state’s bias crime laws, which cur
rently include sexual orientation.
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hearings, Basic Rights Oregon executive director
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